


I loved you

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: ... Graves is also in need of the biggest hug you could ever give him, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Graves is a gun for hire, Grindlewald is a crime lord, M/M, Monkey!Niffler, Newt is a spy, Parrot!Pickett, and murder, but then you kind of expected that with the gun for hire and crime lord scenario, tw: alcoholism and suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 12:03:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15291114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Ten years ago Graves looked at the world and declared it fucked up and fucked over and gave it the middle finger. Followed the middle finger up with a broken bottle to the face. A knife to the kidneys. A bullet to the chest. Went back to knives, because guns? Really? What was he, some kind of wannabe gangster too scared to get personal when it was called for? He’s sending a guy’s soul home to judgement, least he can do is stand close enough to see it go.He flicked through the money with bloody fingers and dropped a twenty in a huddled runaway’s paper cup. Washed the night down with alcohol and sleeping pills and was never sure if they were meant to help him get to sleep or to stop him waking up in the morning. Ten years ago, Graves didn’t care.





	1. Chapter 1

Ten years ago, Graves was a stupid kid who made stupid decisions. Got involved in stupid stuff. Did stupid things.

Did awful things.

_People change, Graves. Why can’t you?_

Ten years ago Graves looked at the world and declared it fucked up and fucked over and gave it the middle finger. Followed the middle finger up with a broken bottle to the face. A knife to the kidneys. A bullet to the chest. Went back to knives, because guns? Really? What was he, some kind of wannabe gangster too scared to get personal when it was called for? He’s sending a guy’s soul home to judgement, least he can do is stand close enough to see it go.

He flicked through the money with bloody fingers and dropped a twenty in a huddled runaway’s paper cup. Washed the night down with alcohol and sleeping pills and was never sure if they were meant to help him get to sleep or to stop him waking up in the morning. Ten years ago, Graves didn’t care.

_I care. Don’t - you can’t say things like that! I care. I fucking care._

Ten years ago, Graves got picked up by Grindelwald’s organisation and didn’t bother asking questions. The pay was good. The life was as shit as anything else. The work was bloody. People died. Graves dropped his twenties in church boxes and charity buckets and raised two fingers at anyone who tried to say thank you. He hunched inside oversized coats that hid an arsenal in their pockets and glared at the world through a lens of beaten, worn out anger. He held his hands out to the most wanted crime lord in Europe and bit off a laugh and said  _fuck if I care, I’m just here to kill people._

Nine years ago, he was Grindelwald’s go to hitman. Eight, he took out the MI6 mole as a freebie favour because he was bored that day. Six years ago, he was Grindelwald’s right hand man. He had ear pieces. He had squads. He sent them where he wanted them to go and they killed who he wanted them to kill. Bullets, a hail of bullets gunning down a girl who tried to run, and all Graves had to do was raise an eyebrow at the guards. He stopped bothering to drop his twenties in waiting hands. He still didn’t bother to ask questions.

_I fucking care, Graves._

A year ago, Graves pressed his butterfly knife against the steady thump of the latest mole’s pulse and asked the man if he knew his country had sent him on a suicide mission.

_No one sent me, I just - there were poachers, I just wanted to stop the poachers, but he’s funding them and he’s funding the ivory trade and coral theft and illegal medicine in Asia and, and blue whales are nearly extinct and he’s funding ships to hunt them and I thought if I could just stop the money then I could fix it. I wanted to fix it._

A year ago, Graves stared into wide and hopeful eyes with honest confusion and let the knife drop.  _Fix it,_  he’d repeated, tasting the words as though they were a foreign concept in his mouth, and the man had quirked his lips into a lopsided, shy smile.  _That was the plan?_  he’d said, asked, offered, and Graves stared and kept staring and somehow never managed to stop.

Newt introduced him to a kleptomaniac capuchin monkey he’d freed from a unlicensed trader, and a macaw with scarlet wings that had been abandoned when its owner died.  _He’s called Pickett,_  Newt said, holding Graves’ hand out where the bird could decide to come forward and be stroked.  _Macaws live for over a hundred years, but no one ever thinks of that when they buy them. It’s one of the things I’m going to change. I’ll make it illegal to own one, and if I can’t, I’ll make people remember them in their will._

Graves ran his fingers through Newt’s messy curls and pressed kisses to his forehead, his cheeks, his eyes his mouth that were more gentle than he thought he knew how to be, and in the night when Newt emptied Graves’ sleeping pills down the sink and bit his lip to keep from crying, when Newt curled around Graves in bed as though  _Graves_  were something precious in need of protecting, when Newt clung to him and buried his face in Graves’ chest to hide his tears -

Six months ago, Graves lied to Grindelwald and sabotaged the man’s plans from within. Six months ago, Graves took Newt and his knife and all the knowledge of Grindelwald’s plans that the man himself didn’t even know, and marched out into the sun. Six months ago, Graves burnt his life to the ground and planted something new in the ashes, because Newt cared and Newt thought he could change and maybe Newt could fix him too.

_Together, Graves. We’ll fix the world together, yeah?_

Last month, Grindelwald’s empire was crumbling. All it needed was one last push, one secret Graves hadn’t known, one final blow to finish the work that Graves had begun, and the governments of the world were swarming over the toppling ruins. Graves himself was miles away, tempting Niffler with overripe papaya slices to distract the monkey from his shiny pen and sketching the plans for the conservation centre Newt wanted to build. In the red-gold evenings he slid his hands under Newt’s shirt and kissed him when he laughed, and in the star-laden nights he spread Newt over the bed and worshipped him.

_I love you, you know that? I love you._

Four days ago, Newt left a copy of his will. He named himself Artemis Scamander in blocky, legal type. He left Pickett the parrot to Graves’ care. He left.

Two days ago, Graves tracked Newt to Paris. To Grindelwald’s last stronghold.

Yesterday, he stole a man’s gun and emptied the clip into an entire squad of people he used to work with.

Today, the gun fell from his hand to clatter against the floor as Newt, wide eyed Newt with his freckles and his shy smiles and the surprised huff of air in his startled laugh, bent Grindelwald over his desk and fucked him.

It’s strange, the things you notice when everything falls apart. Time slows. It doesn’t, not really; your mind speeds up, denial sending it scrambling for an alternate explanation, a desperate misunderstanding, for something to make sense of things that could never be true.

Graves finds his explanation in the suit Newt is wearing, perfectly tailored but bunching oddly around his shoulders, as though the material were woven too thick and too bullet proof to sit in the usual creases. He finds it in the cufflinks on Newt’s wrist, the way the one is twisted to the left, the way Newt is careful to keep it uncovered so the recording isn’t muffled. He finds it in the way Newt’s hair is pushed back, the way the satisfied smirk and the shuttered eyes fit so naturally on his face as though Graves’ dreaming optimist had never existed. He finds it in the memory of pulling Newt aside for the very first time and accusing him of a being a mole, and the way Newt’s heart had been steady as he lied through his teeth to save his cover.

_I fucking care. I love you. People change. No one sent me. We’ll fix the world together, yeah?_

His gun drops to the floor and clatters and Newt flicks his eyes up to meet Graves’. He stutters for a moment, something that Graves refuses to identify twisting his face, and Graves offers him a salute and a sardonic smile as he bows his way out of the room. It’s fine. There’s one last secret left before Grindelwald’s empire topples, and if Newt didn’t get it by fucking Graves, then it’s only natural for him to move up the chain. Graves wishes him all the best.

(Graves snarls in his mind and for a second he wishes –)

_Show’s over, boys_ , he says to the squads he meets in the corridor.  _The boss is being rogered by Her Majesty’s finest and he’ll be bringing the place down around us as soon as he’s cleaned up._

One bright young spark leaps to her feet and draws her gun; Graves doesn’t even look. His knife sinks in and the woman chokes as she drowns.  _Let me make one thing very clear,_  he says in the frozen silence that follows.  _We don’t touch the English spy. We don’t shoot him. If Grindelwald orders him dead, we don’t obey._

He buries the new man that Newt so carefully helped him build and his old scowls falls into place like a familiar shield he’d sorely missed. Grindelwald was the man behind it all but Graves had been his right hand, his assassin, his enforcer and his weapon - the squads remember Graves enough to remember this. They nod, shaky and unnerved. One of them fumbles through a salute as though unsure if he should be giving it. The woman in the corner wheezes as she finally dies.

And that’s it. That’s done. Graves walks out the building and leaves his knife behind, raises both middle fingers to the world and sets out to find someone new to start paying him and some new hands to drop blood-stained twenties into when he’s done.

(Graves screams in his mind and for an agonising eternity he wishes –)

And that’s it. Life is as shit as anything else, people die, and Graves is still a stupid kid making stupid decision and getting involved in stupid things, however prettily they were packaged at the time.

That’s all there is.


	2. Chapter 2

Today, Graves is a stupid kid making stupid decisions and getting involved in stupid things. He walks out the building and leaves his life behind him and files away the screaming in his mind where he doesn’t have to listen to it. There are explosions, shouting, the sky painted crimson with smoke-shrouded fire, and Graves doesn’t stop to care about why Newt has foregone subtlety in favour of the dramatic approach. Why should he care? It’s nothing to do with him. His part is over, his role is played out, it’s time to move on.

He slips into the shadows and the underground tunnels and keeps walking. His hands are in his pockets. He has no knives and no gun and no plan, so he keeps walking. Behind him, everything burns.

Tomorrow, Graves will go back to the house. He’ll open the door with the key Newt gave him and he’ll keep his coat on and his shoes on and walk right past the hooks on the wall that Newt screwed into place. Pickett will twist his head side to side, focusing on him with first one eye and then the other, and Graves will reach for the will Newt left on the kitchen table.

_Artemis Scamander_ , it still reads in it’s stark black type, and it leaves Graves a safe house, a lock box, a bank account. There are no apologies and no explanations, but, Graves will think, there don’t need to be. Newt’s said enough.  _Artemis Scamander_  has said enough.

Niffler climbs Graves’ leg, thieving hands digging in his pockets for treats and shiny coins, but Graves will ignore him. Pickett will say something nonsensical from his perch on the lampshade, but Graves will ignore him too. Niffler will steal the third button from Graves’ shirt and present it to Graves with a high pitched squeak of excitement, and Graves will run his fingers over the listening device stuck to the back.

_Useful little bugger aren’t you,_  he’ll say to Niffler, and what he won’t say is  _I wondered why he didn’t try to rehabilitate you if he was so against the exotic pet trade_ or  _Do you think he ever cared about you beyond your usefulness._ He won’t raise the bug to his mouth and say his goodbyes. He won’t think about what Newt might have heard through the innocuous button.

In two days’ time, he’ll leave the button in the kitchen. He’ll take Niffler and Pickett. He’ll take a roll of twenties. 

_I loved you,_  he won’t say to the sun-filled house, and the ring of his heel against the wooden steps won’t echo like grief in his soul.

In four days’ time, he’ll disembark from the latest train that went to anywhere and stride across the platform with his monkey and his parrot. He’ll take the next train and change twice more and if you ask him, he won’t be able to say which stations he passed through or which country he’s reached. The writing is Cyrillic, the language is foreign, and it’s only at Niffler’s insistence that Graves remembers his companions need to eat. He’ll get himself a coffee and hold it as it cools, and Pickett will carefully drop an orange segment in the cup and nudge it towards him.

In a month, Graves will have a new apartment and a new job. He’ll be in Belarus. He’ll work in a shop stacking loaves of bread and cartons of bottles of water with sports-cap lids. The radio runs through the shrinking list of Grindelwald’s associates known to still be at large and recaps the progress of the cleanup crew so far.

Six months, and Graves will be in a new country with a new gun. He aims. Adjusts the angle to account for the man’s walking speed. Fires. He’ll be paid in two and five hundred euro notes, and it will seem like too much effort to exchange them at the bank for twenties so Graves will take the two hundred and slip it beneath the sodden pillow of a man asleep in an abandoned doorway. He’ll pick up a tacky gold cross that shines in the light and a packet of ground nuts in the shop on his way home, and he’ll feed Niffler and Pickett before he ever thinks to feed himself. In the end, he’ll stare blankly at his empty fridge and choose instead to wash the night down with alcohol and sleeping pills.

In a year, he’ll have made a name for himself. He knows enough of Grindelwald’s old contacts. Managed enough of Grindelwald’s business. It’s nothing he cares about but it’s what he knows how to do and it’s what he’s good at; he’ll find some new fools to call the shots and point him at their enemies and he’ll raise his gun and fire. Find some new wannabes to hire a personal guard and marshal them into squads that gun people down when he raises an eyebrow at them. Find some new cities and some new countries and some new wooden blocks for Pickett to climb on, and he’ll slide back into the man he used to be.

It will sit ill on his shoulders, a mantle he’s outgrown, a weight he doesn’t want to bear anymore. He’ll grip knives by the blade until his blood runs red down his wrists but when he sends a guy’s soul home to judgement, he’ll stand far enough away that he can’t see it go. He’ll get used to the recoil and the acrid smell but he won’t get used to the sound a bullet makes when it makes a woman plead for him to spare her wife. He’ll leave a trail of bloody two hundreds, five hundreds, anything he can, and he’ll throw his sleeping pills down the sink and curse Newt’s name for ever thinking Graves could change.

The radio will run through the final few of Grindelwald’s associates, the last bit of clean up of the crime lord’s empire, and Graves’ name will not be on the list.

In six years, there’ll be another mole. Graves works for four bosses but everyone knows he’s the one with the power. She’ll be wearing a red dress, red lips, hair over her shoulder like a river of blood, and Graves will feel like laughing in her face because don’t they know what it takes to seduce him? Haven’t they done it once before? Don’t they have a file somewhere that says what he’s weak to, the exact number of freckles it takes to bring him down, the level of naive optimism and hope needed to worm past his defences and make him sing like an opera whore?

He won’t bother to be kind when he sends her home.

Eight years, and they’ve mounted a full scale operation against him. The honeypot missions have stopped, but two of his bosses have been compromised. Graves shrugs. He doesn’t like them much anyway; it’s just a matter of cleaning up to take them out. Besides, the organisation he runs is a mite different from the ones they’d originally founded, and he’s tired of defending the money he funnels to his lost causes.

_Don’t you get tired of caring?_  the third boss asks as Graves signs off on the construction of a new orphanage, a new hospital, a new soup kitchen for his homeless strays. Graves stares back at the man blankly because everyone knows that Graves doesn’t care. He has his monkey and he has his parrot and he builds walls out of bloody twenties as though that would change the past, but he doesn’t care about any of it.

(Sometimes, when he’s drunk, he buys acres of the Amazon rain forest and leaves them to Newt in his will. Never, when he’s sober, does he ever fund the ivory trade.)

Nine years’ time and the operation against him is hard to ignore. The last two bosses have pulled out. One of them is dead. One of them converted and sold Graves’ secrets to a girl with wide eyes and a pretty mouth that lied to save her cover. Four of Graves’ hideouts are compromised. His business contacts refuse to deal with him. International trade is falling apart. Graves turns the flame lower on the soup kitchen’s industrial stove and stirs the stew as it simmers; he takes Niffler to the orphanages and coaxes him out with shiny coins to play with the children; he holds the hand of a bleeding woman as she cries and shoots her husband in the chest when he tries to say she made him do it; he sinks his empire’s wealth into trees and land and drone surveillance of endangered habitats; he raises his hands and steps away when he’s asked to chop vegetables and jokes that  _me and knives, we have something of a rocky relationship, and I’d hate to bleed in the soup._

He kills eight men he used to work with because they’re a potential security leak. He orders a hit on a hotel that houses his enemy and listens dispassionately as the families that were staying there die. He tortures a woman to see how much she knows, and ships her right hand back to her handler as a warning he knows they won’t heed.

In ten years’ time, Graves’ empire will be in tatters. All it needs is one last push, one secret no one but Graves had known, one final blow to finish the job. The governments of the world are swarming over the toppling ruins.

Graves sits on the edge of the roof and feeds banana slices to his monkey and his parrot. His feet dangle over the edge, heels resting against the concrete wall. He wonders, idly, what will happen to his lost causes when he’s gone, but he can’t be bothered to do anything about it. The wind rustles through his hair, and the star-laden night waits patiently for the red-gold evening to fade. He closes his eyes.

_I left you Pickett in my will,_  he says.

Newt steps out the shadow. Graves hears his footsteps, cautious and slow, and wonders if the man is wearing his bullet proof suit, his bugged cufflinks, his hair pushed back and his beauty hidden behind a satisfied smirk and shuttered eyes.

_I don’t want you to die,_  Newt says as though that means anything, and Graves laughs. It’s harsh and broken, like his voice is ragged from the scream that began when Newt had left and never really stopped.

_I don’t care._

There’s a step, just one, the tread too heavy and too abruptly cut off. Graves finds himself waiting for the words that come next, the words that Newt always said, the refusal and the anger because Newt fucking cared -

Newt doesn’t say them.

(Newt didn’t add his name to the list of Grindelwald’s associates. Newt didn’t track him across Europe by the trains he took. Newt didn’t come back to the house to find him, to tie up his loose ends. Newt never withdrew from the bank account he put aside and he never visited the safe house he left Graves in his will. Of all the agents that came after Graves, Newt never did.)

Graves smiles into the wind and the fading warmth of the sunset, and shifts Pickett from his shoulder to the concrete rooftop beside him.

_Costa Rica,_  he says.  _The drugs. That’s what they sent you to find out, isn’t it? The last loose end, the final part of the empire?_

_No one sent me._

_I built your conservation centre. The drugs funded it to start, but I made it a separate charity. It’s in Cahuita, you’d like it._ He moves Niffler to sit next to Pickett, pressing down on the monkey’s head to keep him there when he tries to climb back up.  _I made it the way you’d like it._

He takes a moment just to be, one long moment where nothing mattered and he didn’t have to care about the fact that he didn’t care. It’s peaceful. Newt is silent, and a part of Graves hates him for it, hates him for taking this last chance away this last opportunity for Graves to shout and scream and hit him and  _hate_  him for what he did, but.

But.

_I loved you,_  he doesn’t say.

_I’m sorry,_  Newt doesn’t answer.

The sun goes down and the first stars are barely visible in the darkening sky. The rough concrete of the rooftop is cold beneath Graves’ palms and the breeze is gentle in his hair.

People don’t change. Graves will always be a stupid kid making stupid decisions, but this is the first one that’s felt so much like freedom.

_I love you._

He falls.


End file.
